


A Rose in the Deeps

by devilinthedetails



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Destiny, Drama, F/M, Fate, Moonlight, Romance, Star-crossed love, starlight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:54:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26545579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Anakin and Padme in the moonlight of their love.
Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Kudos: 20





	A Rose in the Deeps

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Romantic Quotes Roulette Challenge at the Jedi Council Forums.

A Rose in the Deeps

“With the earth and the sky and the water,   
remade, like a casket of gold  
For my dreams of your image that blossoms,  
a rose in the deeps of my heart.”—  
“The Rose in the Deeps of His Heart,”  
William Butler Yeats

After months away at war, Anakin had returned home. Home wasn’t the rough, unforgiving sands of Tatooine where his mother had die and been buried under a simple headstone on the Lars homestead. Home wasn’t the Jedi Temple with its cool lake, its serene meditation chambers, its graceful arches and statues of long-dead Masters eternally alive in the Force, and the unending musical harmony of the Room of a Thousand Fountains. Home was none of those places because in none of those places did Anakin’s ever-wandering soul find rest.

The only place that his soul found rest was in the enfolding, warmth of his wife’s arms, and that meant Padme was his home no matter how the Jedi stubbornly refused to accept their love and the undeniable truth that they should be together always.

They stood together now on the garden terrace of her Coruscant quarters. When they lifted their eyes to the night sky, the tightly clustered constellations of the Core were dimmed by the bright, ever flashing holosigns that dominated Coruscant’s skyline, advertising an almost unfathomable variety of goods and services for the myriad species that inhabited the Republic’s thronging capital world.

Even the silvery light cast by Coruscant’s quartet of moons—one waxing to full, one approaching a half moon, one a gleaming crescent, and the smallest waning toward the dark emptiness of a new moon when its light would be invisible to the unaided human eye.

Staring up at the stars and moons might have sounded romantic, Anakin thought, until it was understood that he and his wife could only be outside together under the anonymous cloak of darkness lest their forbidden love be discovered and exposed for the galaxy’s harsh judgment.

Tired of their forbidden love, raging against the Jedi who had prohibited it and doomed them to this fate of secrecy, shadows, and lies, Anakin lifted his fingers toward the sky as if he could call down the stars and moons as easily as he had once summoned fruit to him to charm her as they dined together on Naboo. As if ripping down the stars and yanking the moons out of orbit would change the Jedi and the galaxy so they could be together forever without shame.

“I love you.” Anakin pressed fervid lips to the soft nape of Padme’s neck, feeling her pulse beat against his mouth. “I would be with you in the open daylight and not just the dark.”

“You can’t.” He felt the pinpricks of fear rise on Padme’s tender skin. She was always so scared of his intensity when he talked of defying the Jedi and the restrictions they would impose on the untamable human heart. “The Jedi would expel you from the Order, and you need to be in the Jedi Order to fulfill your destiny of service to the galaxy.”

His destiny as Chosen One. Another form of slavery all the more painful because of the illusion that he was free to determine his own fate. Another heavy burden, a chain that bound him that he would gladly break to attain true freedom—the freedom to be with the woman he loved whenever his heart desired.

“I love you nobly as a Jedi should strive for peace and justice.” Anakin kissed his wife’s neck as he counted the ways he loved her beyond reason and rules. “I love you purely and humbly as a Jedi should turn from praise. I love you with the burning passion of my childhood faith that I could win a Podrace and escape the slavery of Tatooine. I love you with the love I though I lost when my mother died. I would remake the Jedi—remake the galaxy—for you because I love you.”

He would make her see how much he loved he and how he couldn’t control that love that rose from the depths of his being, overwhelming him like a river overflowing its banks. He would make the Jedi see that he loved her with a love that couldn’t be forbidden or constrained. He would make the entire galaxy understand and tremble with the knowledge that his love for her would not be confined to shadows or consigned to shameful secrecy. He would shake the very Core of the galaxy if he had to just so that he could be with her without prohibition or condemnation.

“You can’t remake the galaxy or the Jedi for love of me.” Padme shook her head, hair shining silver in the starlight and skin sparkling like diamonds in the pale moonlight. “I don’t even want you to try.”

“Why?” Anakin’s mouth went desert dry at her words, and it was a challenge to choke out this desperate, aching question. Was this her way of saying that she no longer loved him or that the intensity of her love had never rivaled his?

“Because my love for you is all the more beautiful because it grows in the darkness where no one but you can see it.” Padme stroked at the petals of roses white as moonlight twining like veins up her terrace wall. “Do you know what this flower is, Anakin?”

“A rose.” Anakin frowned, nonplussed by her sudden focus on flowers.

“A special kind of rose.” Padme continued to pet the petals with a gentle touch Anakin couldn’t help but envy. “A Naboo moonrose. One that only unfurls at night when the moonlight hits it. One that absorbs the moonlight, reflecting and responding to it instinctually. My love for you is like that, Anakin. You are my moonlight, and I respond to you. I had moonroses planted on this terrace because I wanted to be reminded of you and our love when you were away at war. My love for you is a rose in the deeps of my heart.”

She had echoed the sentiments he felt for her, and the fist squeezing his heart relaxed, opening like a moonrose at night.


End file.
